dinosaurs

I like birds. To me they represent evolution; they are perfectly designed. I love staring at them close up and admiring their perfect eyes and streamlined bills and dainty feets and plumed tails and their remarkable feather patterns.

I have a copy of The Simpson & Day Field Guide to the Birds of Australia, 7th Edition. It is crumpled and literally every single page is stained.

Birds that I have observed in our backyard include:

Australian Magpie

Terror of cyclists and small children everywhere, responsible for my mother’s bird phobia. There is a family of approximately thirty birds in our area, they visit our backyard often. I feed them dry cat food. They eat it from my hand.

Grey Butcherbird

We have two parents and their baby. They hang out on our Hill’s Hoist, and shyly take the bits of cheese I leave for them on the front veranda. I would like to invite them in to take care of our gecko problem.

Pied Currawong

I’ve been hearing them for a few days – they have a very distinctive call – but saw one today for the first time digging in the leaf litter by the shed. Was excited. Came inside to write this post.

Noisy Miner

Just constant cheepings. Constant.

Tawny Frogmouth

So a month or so ago we had a family of two or three frogmouths move in for around a week before the Miners chased them off. I’m still a bit upset with them about that.

Blue-faced Honeyeater

I love these guys. They are surprisingly huge, and utterly gorgeous. We’ve had a family on the property for a few months now so I hope they stick around. The miners sometimes bug them but not too much.

Rainbow Lorikeet

Also really noisy, in that piercing screechy way that parrots all seem to screech piercingly, and even more pervasive since they seem to travel in such enormous groups. Families of hundreds, which mostly hang out at the shopping centre down the road, but they do drop by most nights to feed, hanging upside down and hopping about like monkeys, on the bottlebrushes.

Scrub Turkey

These guys get such a bad rap, and I mean they do dig up carefully cultivated gardens across the land, but I think they’re pretty fascinating. Their neck scrote only gets scrotey when they’re mating. Also a lot of people don’t realise how really massive they build their nest mounds. Like, huge.

Australian Raven

And these guys, of course. They don’t stick around too much, I just hear them sometimes croaking harshly and clicking creepily at the top of the Poinsiana. I mean, I don’t want to discriminate, and I do think they’re awesome, but I really don’t want them to stick around. I can tune out the Miners, but not this.

That’s all I can think of right now.

P.S. Since this is my first post in a while: No, I’m not pregnant.

Citations

I’ve been watching a documentary on dinosaurs: The discovery of Utahraptor nearby Gastonia and what their relationship might have been. Apparently Utahraptor would not ordinarily have preyed upon Gastonia, which was pretty heavily armoured and defended, however they are theorising that it was times of drought and Utahraptor was desperate… Much like a lone lion who is driven by starvation to prey upon a buffalo.

Meanwhile Gastonia is an awesome name for a dinosaur; way cooler than Utahraptor, which is quite an uninspired title for a top predator. Twice the size of Deinonychus!

Watching the cycle of deduction was pretty enlightening. Being a paleontologist is one of the many careers I could easily have chosen. If dinosaurs are what resides in our imaginations when we read of them and look upon their bones, based upon what those before us had concluded thus far, then they were very different creatures when I was reading my illustrated books about dinosaurs as a seven year old obsessesante. As I recall, my childhood Tyrannosaurus Rex stood proudly vertical — like Godzilla — her tail dragging in the dust behind her. My Brontosaurus (as he was known at the time) lifted his head many stories high, as a giraffe, his tail (again) dragging behind him. Often he was to be found in swamps, where the water could buoy his massive bulk, which his puny skeletal system could not handle.

If you visit the Queensland Museum today, you can see their likenesses in the front children’s play area. I think there may now be a sign defensively declaring that these particular monuments had been constructed in a time when those designing them had no fucking clue what they were on about.

I’ve a pretty advantageous viewpoint up here on the shoulders of these giants, I know. It makes me wonder… What will those whose perspective is ever so much higher again think of me and us, one day?

Given the political atmosphere in my country of residence, I rather dread to think. Subject change, post haste!

I’ve begun a private journal, with a minimum word count per day. When I was typing furiously away in it today Brenton wondered what I was up to. Why would I not allow him to peek over my shoulder? Well, because allowing anyone else to read the contents of my private thought-dump defeats the entire purpose! of doing it for one’s only self. The idea is that the content and style of one’s writing is very different when in a private Vs public sphere.

Which I suppose are both different again to words which are never to be read by anyone, ever, once they are out of the skull-pocket. Such as are typed in said private journal. Seeking a quiet space, just for me, dismantling my thoughts, et cetera. So. That is why I don’t want Brenton to read it. For the first time, I am not writing with a mask on. I don’t want that mask to come sneaking in to that space… for it to become an issue; for it is always, always an issue. Moreso for me than most, I imagine (but then again, don’t we all. I should just entitled my self-published journals “Moreso for me”).

I must admit, I am not entirely sure I have ever written anything, EVER, for one’s only ever self. For all of my journals I am certain I have had the idea, nestled quietly in the very back of my brainjunk, that of course someone would one day cast their curious gaze upon these gory innards… if only my own children, on finding the decaying remnants of such in the dankest depths of my cat infested, penetrated by none (bar myself) unintentional tomb. Because who else would want to read my journal, haha, ha, … . private joke.

What is this mess

O hey, hi my darling. I'm overocea & this is my journal. I've vowed to note my everyday inconsequence indefinitely, so that I can read it when i'm 80. I expect it to be hideously boring to anyone except an 80year old me.